Jonathan Noble: Off Line

Jenson Button is not normally your glass-half-empty type of guy, but even he was struggling in Malaysia to put a positive spin on the mess that Honda Racing has found itself in.

With the team all but admitting that the RA107 is a write-off, as work continues in Brackley on a car that will be new in all-but-name for the Canadian Grand Prix, Button's current modus operandi is very much 'like it, lump it and just hope it gets better for the future'. Hungary 2006 now seems a long, long time ago.

"If I hadn't won a race yet it would be pretty tough," says Button, who was desperately searching for reasons to smile throughout the Sepang weekend. A sideswipe from Adrian Sutil on the first lap did not help matters.

"We've known about this car for three months, though, and have known it wasn't very quick. We've been getting very frustrated and shouting at each other a lot, but there's no use doing that at the moment.

"We've done everything we can with this car and we've just got to grin and bear it for the next few weeks. Hopefully there are some big improvements coming, but it's not going to happen in the next two or three weeks. It's going to take much longer - maybe a couple of months.

"We've just got to get the best from what we've got. It's not nice finishing 12th but we've just got to bear it."

The talk at Honda Racing's launch earlier this year was of the fight for wins and even a world championship challenge. It says much for how far the team's expectations have been put in check by the RA107 that Button now takes heart from simply beating Super Aguri's modified version of his 2006 car.

Looking for the positive that he will take from the Malaysia weekend, he was hesitant: "Well, compared to some of the cars around us we're a little bit quicker. We beat the Super Aguris and Toro Rossos, which is a step forward, but we're still miles from where we want to be.

"The annoying thing is that I got the balance right for the third stint, and the lap times were okay. It's frustrating not to have done that earlier."

At a time when Britain's new media darling, Lewis Hamilton, is dazzling the F1 world with his exploits at the front of the field, Button could be forgiven for feeling a tinge of jealousy. Yet Hamilton's star status is at least keeping the heat off Button a little, which is exactly what he could do with during these difficult days.

But despite the frustrations, there is no hint yet that Button is throwing in the towel. The new car for Canada; the talks that are taking place between Honda and Ross Brawn about a future tie-up; the fact that Honda has dug itself out of holes like these before - Button knows there are reasons to see this one through to the end.

"It's easy to keep the motivation up because I still love racing," he explains.

"We're not as far up as we were last year, but I'm still having good battles and looking forward to where we'll be going with the new car later in the year.

"That will mark a completely different direction from this car, which is what we need. It's probably a good thing for Honda. Maybe we need to go in a different direction. It might help us challenge for the championship in future.

"But for now you look back and appreciate last year's good points and realise how much more we should have celebrated them. I was massively disappointed here last year when I finished third, but I think you have to be realistic and say we should have been happy to be on the podium at the time. We'd forgotten how bad it could get - but we're back there now."